Black and Gold Weekend

Okay, so maybe one of my August goals should have been take better pictures. But that would involve the sub-goal of take pictures when it is light out.But early mornings and evenings just so happens to be when my food is out and ready to go. It would also help if I made some food that wasn’t beige. So you can just enjoy (or not) the pictures accompanying my weekend cooking.

And confession: I’m a little bit of a passive-aggressive roommate. Roommates, did you and your entire party get home with significant amounts of noise at 4:30AM on both Saturday and Sunday? Well then, get ready to experience noisy pancake-making-time one hour later. You’re welcome.

Apple Pie Pancakes

I woke up with all intention of making coffee pancakes, as suggested by Michelle, but drank two cups of coffee before getting started, and more coffee sounded unnecessary (although still delicious).

This recipe makes enough for one me, which is probably enough for two of anyone else. I love my pancakes.

1/2 C spelt flour

3/4 t baking powder

LOTS of cinnamon

SOME freshly ground nutmeg (or the preground kind)

1/2 C applesauce

1 t vanilla

Enough milk-of-choice to make your thickness-of-choice batter

Mix the dry, add in the wet. Pancake time! Smother with maple syrup. And if you’re like me, eat ’em with a spoonful of peanut butter (or two).

Mango-Coconut Cobbler

This was based off of the Coconut Mango Cobbler recipe from Spabettie, although I changed up amounts and ingredients and used coconut flour for the cobbler part–yum. I shared with my roommates, does that make up for the 5:30am pancake noise?

Golden Larablars

I was inspired by Miriam to try making some Larabar-style bars at home. Being the cheap-o that I am, I avoided cashews, dates and those other would-be-nice ingredients and went almonds, dried apricots and golden raisins.

These came out delicious but were flimsy and very sticky (hence the classy inclusion of saran wrap), so they were individually wrapped and tucked in the freezer. Mmm, frozen fruity-crunchy treats!

More coffee is never unnecessary.
Whenever I’ve had roommates, I’ve been mostly passive as well. I’m not the confrontational type- especially with somebody you have to see every day! Hopefully none of your boys become too problematic.

I’m better about speaking up than I used to be–I ended up with a terrible housing situation due to passivity a while ago. My boys are pretty well behaved though 😀 They just had friends in town for the weekend, so it was an out-of-the-ordinary thing and doesn’t happen often

5:30am pancakes are always acceptable–especially when noisy roommates are involved!

Andrew has this tendency to be a night owl (stayed up until 2:30am last night, for example), and loves to come to bed and wake me up, so I don’t feel guilty when I have to get up for work at 6am. Shower + blow dryer + blender are all happening.

The golden larabars look fantastic. To make them less sticky next time maybe adjust the almond to fruit ratio. Or process some of the almonds into a more almond flour before adding some almonds to be partly crunchy. Just suggestions. I never would have thought to use golden raisins. Great work!

The golden raisins are delicious in the bars! And only cost a few cents more than regular raisins, so I wasn’t breaking the bank but still got my golden bars. Grinding the almonds more makes sense–I left mine in pretty big pieces ’cause I like the crunch, so maybe next time I’ll make half more “flour-like” and leave the rest crunchy.

Mmmhhh, pancakes – they look so delicious!! 🙂
Noisy roommates…I have been exeperiencing this for the last 6 years, so I am getting used to it. I am not a big party person, so it was always putting me off, but now I just wait and fall asleep as soon as the noise goes a bit down 🙂

Yeah, if they get back early enough I fall right back to sleep, but when it’s 4:30 and I get up at 5:30, I find it impossible to go back to bed and usually go ahead and get up (but plan a nice afternoon nap 😀 )